It may be desirable to allow a user of a vehicle to view certain areas and/or objects which are located or disposed in the front and/or along the side of the vehicle, thereby allowing the user to gain additional images or information over that which is traditionally and/or typically provided by conventional vehicle "rear view" mirrors. This additional information may be useful in the navigation and/or operation of the vehicle.
Some attempts have been made to provide images of these frontal and/or side areas and/or objects. Particularly, these attempts include the use of one or more mirrors or image capture devices which are wholly disposed within the passenger compartment of the vehicle, the use of assemblies which are disposed and/or mounted upon the conventional rear-view mirror assemblies or "mirror-containment" members or shrouds, providing an arm or member having several image capture portions or apparatuses and which is selectively extendible from the side of the vehicle, and providing a selectively extendible periscope type assembly which is usually and selectively deployed and/or extended through the roof of the vehicle. While these attempts often provide desired images, they suffer from some drawbacks.
For example and without limitation, the assemblies which are wholly deployed within the vehicle and/or within the vehicle passenger compartment are often hidden from view or optically obstructed due to the placement of packages and/or other materials and individuals present in the vehicle. These obstructions substantially prevent these assemblies from properly operating and/or undesirably interfere with their operation.
The assemblies which are mounted upon the traditional rear-view mirrors are unaesthetic, frequently and undesirably engage car wash components, thereby causing damage to the components and to the vehicle, and present and/or display images having substantially identical display sizes in a "stacked manner" (e.g., the image of the front or side of the vehicle is presented "on top of" or "over" the image of the rear of the vehicle), thereby tending to confuse the driver or the operator of the vehicle and distracting the driver by requiring the driver to tilt his or her head to view the frontal and/or side images and/or requiring the driver to take his or her eyes "off of" the rear images.
The selectively extendible assemblies require linkages or members which are selectively extended from the side of the vehicle. These linkages or members require frequent repair or replacement due to the structural degradation that occurs and which is caused by various materials residing within and/or comprising the ambient environment that the vehicle resides within (e.g., road salt). These assemblies, when fully extended, also typically prevent the vehicle from traversing relatively "tight" passages, from traversing in close proximity to pedestrians, bicyclists, and/or other vehicles (e.g., such as when these devices are extended during a left-hand turn maneuver). These assemblies further require that the driver or operator of the vehicle remember to retract these assemblies when travelling in these "tight" passages, near other objects, and/or when making or completing a left-hand turn, or risk incurring substantial damage to the vehicle, causing other structural damage to other objects or vehicles, and/or injuring a pedestrian, bicyclist, or other individual. Further, these extended members undesirably create "drag" which adversely effects the overall performance of the vehicle and which causes the linked members to rotate with respect to each other, thereby potentially destroying the linked connection.
Lastly, the periscope approaches were and are of relatively limited use when the vehicle was or is behind a large truck or sports utility vehicle. Due to the proliferation of such relatively large sports utility vehicles, such periscope approaches are becoming even more undesirable. Moreover, such approaches create undesirable "drag" and potentially cause damage if these periscopes are not retracted by the vehicle owner or operator as the vehicle is traversing under a relatively short underpass or traversing a car wash.
It may therefore be desirable to provide an image acquisition and display assembly which selectively provides and displays images of areas and/or objects residing within the front and/or within the front and along the side portions of a vehicle and which overcomes the various drawbacks of such prior assemblies.